April
19, 2000

ELIAN
GONZALEZ AND THE HAND OF GOD

Whatever
else they disagree on when it comes to the controversy surrounding Elian Gonzalez,
pundits left and right all nod their heads sagely whenever someone says that
this is a great "tragedy" and offers up the bromide that "no one is a winner"
in this case. This is incomprehensible to most Cuban-Americans, and no doubt
to most Cubans, who fully realize what a triumph it is for anyone to escape
the totalitarian hell of Castro's workers paradise. But ideology aside for the
moment, there is something else going on here, a divide that has more to do
with religion than with politics. Let's look at what actually happened to little
Elian and see if we can understand why Americans, (including the Attorney General
and the President of the United States) could have come to believe that it is
better to send the boy back.

AN
HONOR GUARD

To
the supporters of Elian and his Miami relatives, the rescue at sea was a "miracle,"
a phrase that the "send-him-back" brigade steadfastly avoids. Not only did Elian
manage to cling to an inner tube for 48 hours, but he was saved from sharks
by the appearance of dolphins who formed a kind of honor guard, ringing the
boy and guiding him to the fishermen who saved his life. Two days under a blazing
sun did not produce the burns and sores that afflict virtually all shipwreck
survivors. It is not just politics that superheats the fervor of Miami's Cuban-Americans
on behalf of Elian, but the influence of religion, and specifically Santeria,
an Africanized Catholicism with pagan elements prevalent in the Caribbean region.
Devotees see the boy as the reincarnation of Elegua, the Santeria equivalent
of the Christ child. That Elian was rescued from the sea is also significant,
in religious terms, as the sea is the dominion of the Virgin of Charity of El
Cobre  Cuba's patron saint, popularly known as Cachita. The
legend that the Virgin appeared to three Cuban fishermen lost at sea has resonance
here. The Virgin Mary's Santeria equivalent, Ochun, characterized as
half virgin half whore, also counts the ocean as her realm. To Cuban-Americans
 and that small part of the native American population not completely
secularized and viscerally hostile to all manifestations of faith in anything
but science  what happened that day off the Florida coast was clearly
divine intervention on the child's behalf. The child is here, and should stay
here, because it was meant to be.

HAPPY
ANNIVERSARY

This
is what divides the devoutly religious Cuban American community from the great
majority of Americans who, according to the omniscient polls, want the boy to
go back with his father. It is the miraculous view of life versus the secular-bureaucratic,
the claim of a higher law versus Janet Reno. If the courts hand down their decision
today, April 19th, authorizing Reno to go in there like gangbusters
and seize the child, it is unlikely that she will take action on this
particular day  the anniversary of the Waco massacre, in which over 80
children and their parents were incinerated by Reno and her fiendish feds. Such
a brash act would only serve to underscore the sinister aspects of this peculiar
battle, which pits an apparently willful and increasingly defiant six-year-old
boy and his American relatives against the power and majesty of the federal
government.

THE
RULE OF LAW

Ask
yourself: why is the Attorney General of the United States so concerned with
"upholding the law" in the single case of Elian Gonzalez, when illegal immigrants
have practically taken over several states in the American Southwest? For god's
sakes, they're voting in San Francisco elections, where the police are officially
constrained by city government from cooperating with the Immigration and Naturalization
Service in deporting known criminals to their country of origin (usually Mexico
or somewhere in Central America). If Janet Reno wants to enforce the law, why
doesn't she go down to Army Street and start forcibly deporting the hundreds
of illegal immigrants who line the streets, waiting to get picked up for temporary
construction and gardening work by cruising employers? Why doesn't she go to
New York City, where she could clean out whole neighborhoods in an effort
to "enforce the law," specifically the immigration laws? Why pick on a six-year-old
refugee from one of the last remaining Communist dictatorships on earth?

FIND
THE COST OF FREEDOM

I
will never forget hearing Congresswoman Maxine Waters' answer to the question
put to her by Larry King: "Would you send him back to Stalin's Russia [or] Hitler's
Germany?" Waters replied: "Yes, of course." Of course? Watching these
born-again liberal champions of parental rights and family values is good for
a few laughs. But there is something distinctly sinister about it, too. The
real agenda of the Clintonians who want to put Elian on the next plane to Havana
was revealed by columnist Eleanor Clift on The McLaughlin Group, when
she blurted out in the heat of the debate: "I'd rather be a poor child in Cuba
than a poor child in New York City." This was startling, not because it is all
that rare an attitude, but because it is rarely so openly expressed. Here is
the evidence, if any were needed, that the Left's newfound devotion to the cause
of father's rights is just window-dressing for the same old fellow-traveling
National Council of Churches line: don't they have universal health care
in the Cuban Gulag? Don't all the little kiddies get their teeth cleaned
twice a year? Don't the Young Pioneers have nice clean uniforms to wear
as they march down Havana's streets demanding the return of their "kidnapped"
little brother? The American Left hasn't cared a rat's ass about civil liberties
since the halcyon days of the Vietnam war era  and then only when their
civil liberties were under attack. The view of Ms. Clift, the archetypal Clintonian,
is not that much different from that of the boy's Commie father, Juan Miguel
Gonzalez, who was asked in a fawning softball interview with Dan Rather if Elian
would lose his freedom if forced to return to Cuba. Gonzalez replied:

"I
ask you what's freedom? Freedom is, for example, in Cuba, where education and
health care are free. Or is it the way it is here? Which of the two is freedom?
For example, here when parents send their children to school they have to worry
about violence. A child could be shot at school. In Cuba, things like that don't
happen. So you can go to work and not worry," said Gonzalez, who is fighting
to get the boy back from relatives in Miami. Which of the two is freedom?"

IN
THE DORM WITH CHE

The
generation that grew up with posters of Che Guevara tacked to the walls of their
college dorms is now occupying the seats of power, in government and the media:
in their view, Fidel is a flawed but heroic figure who improved the lot of the
average Cuban, a lovable Stalinist with panache and style. Like the Bush administration,
which was afraid of the anti-Communist rebellions that rocked the Soviet Empire
in Germany, and initially tried to undercut and downplay the rising tide in
Eastern Europe, the Clintonians have always feared the consequences of a successful
anti-Communist uprising in Cuba in the wake of Castro's death. It is not hard
to imagine the panic of our foreign policy bureaucrats as they project the "destabilization"
of the region in the wake of a revolution in Cuba  one that could precede
the Cuban caudillo's death if the boy winds up staying in Miami. This
possibility is raised in a
fascinating article in Monday's Miami Herald [April 17, 2000], by
Guillermo Cabrera Infante, in which he sketches in the all-important religious
context of the Elian controversy:

"As
soon as the Santeros learned of Elian's fate . . . they declared that he was
a divine Elegua and that if he remained in Miami  in other words, in exile
 Fidel Castro 'would fall.' The Elegua had to be returned to Cuba for
the protection of an atheist dictator who believes all of the Santeros' prophecies.
Soon after these predictions became known, Castro began his speeches, roaring
threateningly, as he always does. Then the marches began, with thousands of
little flags suddenly appearing, in addition to (another miracle) identical
T-shirts with a likeness of the boy's face, so that he could appear over every
Cuban's heart (or at least on their shirts). All sorts of Cubans, captive and
free, marched.

"As
time goes by, the prophecies of the Santeros are becoming increasingly gloomy:
Without the child there will be no Castro. Is anyone surprised that an erstwhile
Marxist-Leninist believes in prophecies? Hitler, no less a secularist, believed
in the auguries of his personal astrologer."

RENO'S
WAR AGAINST THE MIRACULOUS

To
Janet Reno, and this Caligulan Administration, the miraculous element of Elian's
odyssey is all the more reason to end it. While they may scoff at the very idea
that Elian might be the reincarnation of some mythical figure out of Caribbean
lore, they know that myths have the power to move nations  and make revolutions.
The longer Elian stays in this country, the more opportunity there is for a
blowup in Havana  and this in an election year. The threat of a destabilized
Cuba accounts not only for Castro's insistence on the return of the child, but
also the US Justice Department's alliance with the Cuban dictator in this affair.
Reno's only problem is that, instead of picking on a small and isolated community
of religious eccentrics on the fringes of American society, such as Koresh and
his followers, they suddenly find themselves up against the population of a
major American city. Incredibly, they are coldly contemplating the logistics
of the coming showdown, making
plans for a sudden forcible entry, a military-style operation eerily reminiscent
of what happened on this day in a tiny Texas town called Waco.

APRIL
19TH  A DAY THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY

Not
only that, but in preparing public opinion for a show of force, they are putting
out a wacko pediatrician, one Dr. Irwin Redlener, who, from his vantage point
in the Bronx, has determined that "Elian Gonzalez is now in a state of imminent
danger to his physical and emotional well-being in a home that I consider to
be psychologically abusive." This is what Redlener wrote in a letter to Attorney
General Janet Reno and INS commissar Doris Meissner, after seeing the video
of Elian recently released by his Miami relatives: in Redlener's phrase, it
resembled a "hostage video." Just as Reno hauled out her government-approved
"experts" to "prove" that David Koresh was "abusing" the children of Waco, so
the Justice Department is sending out Redlener to explain that, whatever violence
occurs as the result of the government's actions in Miami, they're doing it
because, as Redlener said on the Today Show, "This child needs to be rescued."
Can the tanks be far behind?

"I
AM NOT GONG TO CUBA!"  THAT'S TELLING 'EM, ELLIAN!

The
government-appointed experts detect signs of "dysfunction" and even "Stockholm
syndrome" in the remarkable video of Elian stating his wishes, misdiagnosing
his behavior as "finger-wagging" disrespect to his father. Compared to the relatively
placid and passive demeanor of the typical American white kid  their own
kids  Elian seems super-animated, his gestures suspiciously emphatic.
Maybe he needs a good dose of Ritalin. But then again, everything in
Elian's culture is emphatic: the gestures, the language, the passion that permeates
the Cuban soul  and represents a continuing threat to Castro's hold on
the country. The most striking aspect of that video was how remarkably coherent
and adult young Elian Gonzalez seemed, how like a Latinized version of those
Tibetan child lamas believed to be reincarnated Buddhas. His voice, rather than
childish and quavering, was serenely self-confident and ringing with real conviction,
and here
is what he said:

"Dad,
I do not want to go to Cuba. If you want to, stay here. I am not going to Cuba.
Dad, you saw that older woman that came to the Sister's house. She wants to
see me back in Cuba. I tell them  I am telling you  you are saying
that I want to return to Cuba. But I am telling you now that I do not want to
go to Cuba. If you would like, stay here. But I do not want to go to Cuba."

BIGGER
THAN RICKY

What
could be clearer than that? This kid doesn't want to go to Cuba  he wants
to go to Hollywood. That video, with little Elian auditioning for the part of
Elegua, was the first starring role of a phenomenon that could be bigger
than Ricky Martin. And who begrudges him his meteoric rise to superstardom,
aside from the dour Janet Reno and a cabal of Cuba-loving Commies?

FAMILY
VALUES, SUI GENERIS  AND UEBER ALLES

In
addition to Reno and liberals of the Eleanor Clift persuasion, the continuing
defiance of Elian and his Miami relatives enrages a small but vocal minority
of "family values" conservatives, who claim that the father's wishes must be
given priority over all else. But is a family only the father? Don't grandmothers
and grandfathers, aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers and cousins count for
something? To say that Elian must be deported to a country where the
official ideology calls for the abolition of the family  in the
fame of family values, no less  is a contradiction of such stunning clumsiness
that one is almost embarrassed to have to point it out. Far from returning to
his father's supposedly loving home, on his return Elian
will be transported to a "transitional environment," i.e. a mini-Gulag complete
with swimming pool and enough room for "counselors" and a dozen "classmates,"
as well as his father's family members, who will "re-integrate" (i.e. re-indoctrinate)
Elian back into the Cuban workers' paradise.

A
HERALD OF THE NEW CUBA?

And
what about Elian  does his age deprive him of any and all say in what
is to be his fate? I refer back to the video that the psychologists and psychiatrists
are descrying as evidence of "exploitation" and "brainwashing." While his gestures
are childish, this is clearly no longer a mere child, but one who has been transformed,
through his ordeal, into something more. Does anyone imagine that he is unaware
of what is going on around him, or that he doesn't have an intimate knowledge
of the cultural and religious context in which his odyssey has taken place?
He is Cuban, after all, and a child. Cachita, Elegua, the
Virgin of Charity of El Cobre: they populate his dreams, waking and sleeping
 and they are Castro's worst nightmares. The child could become the center
of a political and religious phenomenon that may herald the the end of Cuban
communism. This is what the Cuban dictator and his American fellow travelers
fear above all  and in this task of preventing such a development the
US government is, for some reason, their dogged instrument.

GOD
HELP US

In
the coming showdown between Elian's supporters and the Justice Department, all
the most ominous signs of a pre-Waco situation seem prominently in place: the
"experts," the threats, the deadlines, the stubborn refusal of the Justice Department
to recognize the religious significance or meaning of the events and their unwillingness
and inability to negotiate or compromise. But the murderous rage of Reno and
her minions, as we have learned, can only be contained for so long. God help
the people of Miami, Elian's family, and Elian himself, for the Satanic evil
that animates the US Justice Department is about done baring its fangs. There
is every indication that Reno is getting ready to strike. And when she does,
we can only hope that the same benevolent force that saved Elian from the jaws
of sharks will keep him out of Reno's (and Castro's) clutches. Coming from a
lifelong atheist, that hope doesn't mean much  but even this dyed-in-the-wool
rationalist is moved to ask: how many shipwreck victims are guided to safety
by dolphins, I wonder: what's up with that? At the start of all this
brouhaha, I wondered: Why is Castro scared shitless of this little boy? Now
I get it. . . .

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